Kia's shared items in Google Reader

An Apollo astronaut on political quagmires

2011-08-18T21:55:20Z

Thank you, Tim Lloyd. This made my day.

Zuckerberg Quits Google+ Over Privacy Concerns

2011-07-13T13:43:00Z

ianpm writes "Mark Zuckerberg has decided to leave Google's new social network because he 'doesn't want to be tracked.' In other news, the Internet's irony meter has just exploded. Robert Scoble is now the most followed person on Google+ according to The Inquirer." Most of the article is about the rankings of various G+ users with big followings. I currently have a measly 400 or so. Guess I'll never be as cool as MySpace's Tom.

A First World Problem - Solved! - Imgur

2011-07-03T18:44:23Z

via http://imgur.com/r/funny/7J5hM
faved by ethel

Maarten van Dorst

2011-06-22T11:59:45Z

“Snelle en vakkundige reparatie! Door bevindingen uit te wisselen kwam MacJunky tot een oplossing van een lastig probleem op mijn MacBook Pro. Absoluut aan te raden om je Apple te laten nakijken bij MacJunky.”

Maarten van Dorst – Amsterdam

Photo

2011-06-19T17:00:06Z

Facebook's iOS app starts polluting News Feed with 'People you may know'

2011-04-26T12:00:00Z

The folks at App Advice contacted us about something I just noticed myself this morning: Facebook's iOS app is rolling out a "People you may know" feature identical to what's on the social network's full site.

This new Facebook feature has instantly got me and many other users annoyed at the app, particularly after the recent "#dickbar" debacle which convinced me to permanently abandon the official Twitter client for a third-party app. Some people may welcome this feature, but part of the reason I like Facebook's iPhone app more than the actual site itself is that a lot of the useless cruft that pollutes Facebook is stripped away in its app. I don't get deluged with ads or those annoying little app requests that people like to send out en masse; instead, all I'm presented with is all I actually want, the News Feed, photos and my friends list.

Much like the official Twitter app's (now mercifully removed) QuickBar, this "People you may know" feature is something completely irrelevant to my interests (absolutely everyone ever suggested by this feature has been someone I do not actually know). Like Twitter's QuickBar, I know I'll never use this feature, but it's also something that, for now, I'm unable to get rid of. I seriously hope the Facebook team has learned from the backlash over Twitter's QuickBar and isn't planning on making "People you may know" a permanent feature that users aren't allowed to disable. Otherwise, at least there are always third-party options to tide me over until they come to their senses.

Facebook's iOS app starts polluting News Feed with 'People you may know' originally appeared on TUAW on Tue, 26 Apr 2011 07:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Freelance Freedom #192: Rushed Expectations, Finale

2011-01-31T13:30:09Z

PHP Web Stat - Last Hits

2011-01-26T11:30:37Z

PHP Web Stat - Last Hits

2011-01-26T11:30:28Z

NVIDIA settlement entitles MacBook Pro owners to repairs or reimbursement

2011-01-16T16:09:57Z

Nvidia is coming clean with Dell, HP and Apple owners who purchased some of the Laptops with discrete GPU “bumps” that sometimes caused failure. Apple went to extraordinary lengths (far beyond Dell or HP), covering Macbook Pros affected with these issues for up to three years and issuing refunds to those who paid for repairs.

If you purchased a MacBook Pro from May 2007 – September 2008, you are likely covered by the settlement.

To view the sample Reimbursement Claim Form formatted as a PDF file for an Apple notebook computer, click here. To view the sample Replacement Claim Form formatted as a PDF file for an Apple notebook computer, click here.

Too afraid

2011-01-11T18:34:00Z

I was too afraid to tell you, now you’ll never know…

via weheartit

Court Orders Twitter to Turn Over User Info in Wikileaks Investigation

2011-01-10T20:01:00Z

Last week a U.S. Justice Department court order was made public that directed Twitter to provide information on several of its users. The subpoena was made in conjunction with an investigation the U.S. Attorney General is making into the actions of the whistle-blower site Wikileaks and its leader, Julian Assange.

The document demands user information for "rop_g; ioerror; birgittaj; Julian Assange; Bradley Manning; Rop Gonggrijp; Birgitta Jonsdottir for the time period from November 1, 2009 to present."

Sponsor

"ioerror" is the Twitter ID for Jacob Appelbaum, who spoke for Wikileaks at a conference last year. Jonsdottir is an Icelandic parliamentarian. All have been, associated, or alleged to be associates, of Assange.

As Glenn Greenwald pointed out on Salon, Appelbaum, Jonsdottir and Gonggrip were three of the producers of the video that showed a helicopter attack that killed Reuters journalists and others in Iraq. The relationship between Wikileaks and the latter two has quieted in recent months. Is the investigation possibly focusing on that incident above others?

Among the information demanded are names and user names, credit card and bank numbers, addresses, "connection records" (showing when they logged in and for how long) and telephone numbers.

Whether or not such a request is "right" it does appear to be legal and Twitter complies with legal requests as a point of policy.

However, the targets of the investigation have received warning, from Twitter, that their information has been subpoenaed. The judge made the subpoena public on January 5, as a result of Twitter's request it be free to inform those of its users who were its targets. The company chose not to comply quietly, and has brought the situation into the open, where it can be debated.

Discuss

Why I’m Having Second Thoughts About The Wisdom Of The Cloud

2011-01-11T00:49:20Z

I’ve always been a big advocate of storing things in the cloud. Not just emails and files, but my entire life. As I’ve written before, I live permanently in hotels, and my whole life fits into carry-on luggage. This means that the vast majority of things I “own”, or at least use, live in the virtual space.

I rent Zipcars in London and San Francisco. I use Hulu (or iPlayer in the UK) for TV and Netflix (/Lovefilm) for movies. My music lives on Pandora, and Last.fm and – yep – Spotify.

My personal information too, lives largely in the cloud: I bank online, I pay taxes electronically and for anything that has to be sent my regular mail, I keep a virtual mailing address at a London members’ club. For email, voice and SMS I use Google Voice, forwarding to whichever SIM card I happen to be using, wherever I am in the world.

Recently, though, I’ve started to have second thoughts about the wisdom of the cloud.

Partly it’s a question of data paranoia. Starting January 1st, I switched from Google Calendar back to a paper calendar (or diary, as we call them in the UK) after becoming increasingly frustrated in trying to get my schedule to sync reliably with my Blackberry. I try to avoid relying on email for important conversations, but if I did I’m not sure I’d trust Gmail for long-time storage needs. It’s early days (literally) but there’s something really nice about writing down an appointment in a book.

More seriously though, I’ve been growing increasingly alarmed by stories like this: the US government subpoenaing Twitter (and reportedly Gmail and Facebook) users over their support of Wikileaks. The casual use of subpoenas, including against foreign citizens is worrying enough – the New York Times says over 50,000 “national security letters” are sent each year - but even more concerning is the fact that often these subpoenas are sealed, preventing the companies from notifying the users they affect.

It used to be that if the US government wanted access to documents or letters in my possession they’d have to subpoena me directly. As a foreign citizen there are all sorts of ways I could fight the request – and it was at least my choice whether to do so. As someone living in the US I also had the whole weight of the 4th Amendment on my side. Now, with everything in the cloud, the decision whether to hand over my personal information is almost entirely out of my hands. And unless, as happened with Twitter, the company storing my data decides to fight for openness on my behalf, there’s every possibility that I won’t even hear about the request until it’s too late. That’s just not how things should work in a free society.

Of course, it remains statistically unlikely that I’m going to be the subject of a subpoena any time soon. I’m hardly an enemy of the state. But then again, until recently, neither were many of the supporters of Wikileaks. Who’s to say that an innocuous organisation I give support to today won’t suddenly become highly controversial tomorrow?

For that reason, I’m giving serious thought to the idea of taking my communications back out of the cloud: switching back to a traditional email client and storing my documents on my encrypted hard-drive. Maybe relying a little less on text messaging and a little more on old school voice conversations. Possibly ever writing the occasional pen-and-paper letter.

Sure, it’ll have to make sure I back up regularly and I’ll miss the convenience of having my documents available wherever I am. But increasingly that feels like a small price to pay for the confidence in knowing who else is trying to pry into my life.

Forget The Social Browsers, Just Install Cortex On Chrome

2010-12-15T09:15:52Z

Even though it hasn’t exactly worked out the first few times companies have attempted it, there’s another movement underway to create a social browser. Currently, RockMelt, Mozilla, and Flock are all trying to fuse social elements into the way we all surf the web. And two of those are doing it on top of Chrome (or Chromium), RockMelt and Flock. But each of those may simply be too much. Why not just go to the source and add a thin layer?

That’s exactly what Cortex, a social extension for Chrome, allows you to do. Instead of trying to rework some of the UI elements of the Chrome browser to make room for sharing and/or social elements, Cortex simply adds a sharing overlay to any site you’re on when you click and hold down your mouse button. Using this mechanism, you can share to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, or Instapaper (assuming you set up each of those). It’s simple and brilliant.

All you do is click and hold, the Cortex sharing wheel appears. Then you select which service you want to share an article (or image) with. And if you hover over one of those areas for a second, you’ll see an option appear for you to leave a message alongside the share. This will show up as your tweet, Facebook Wall posting, etc.

If you set it up, you can also use this wheel to share directly with certain Facebook friends.

Cortex is the work of two developers, Eric Wolf and Joey Primiani, who have managed to get their extension over 10,000 active users in just a few weeks. Primiani was previously an intern at Google where he helped design the touch interfaces for search on mobile and tablet devices. That work is clearly paying off here, and Cortex brings a touch-like approach to Chrome on the desktop.

And it’s easy to imagine a sharing mechanism like this eventually being implemented on touch devices as well.

The key to Cortex is simplicity and speed. You just hold down the mouse button and you can share. The extension picks the best title and image for you automatically. And based on my tests, it’s really good at that. There’s no need to click multiple times to share something, it’s click once, drag, and go. You can share something in 2 or 3 seconds.

I’ve written previously about the speed of sharing, and how important it is. Cortex takes it to the next level.

Find the extension here, and learn more in the video below.

CrunchBase Information

Cortex

Information provided by CrunchBase

A GrowlMail alternative

2010-12-07T15:30:00Z

I really like GrowlMail but it isn't up-to-date with OS X. So here's an AppleScript alternative.

You need the growlnotify utility that comes in Growl Extras on the Growl installer disk image.

Create the following AppleScript and save it. Then create a match-all rule in Mail.app (Mail » Preferences » Rules » Add Rule) to run the script as the performed action. Don't apply it to the existing messages, just new ones.

using terms from application "Mail"
 on perform mail action with messages theMessages for rule theRule
  tell application "Mail"
   repeat with m in theMessages
    set sub to m's subject
    set sndr to m's sender
    set msg to sndr & " " & sub
    -- display dialog msg
    ...

The latest Web beat box tool? Google translate

2010-11-30T16:46:07Z

We absolutely love this idea:

Here’s the key:
zk = suspended cymbal
bschk = snare
pv = brush
bk = bass
tk = flam1
vk = roll tap
kt = flam2
kttp = flam tap
krp = hi hat tap
pv = short roll
th = better hi hat
thp, ds = instant rimshot.

Volkswagen ball from Lars-Erik Fisk

2010-11-30T15:04:09Z

Volkswagen ball from Lars-Erik Fisk

Apple retail opening up in Amsterdam, report

2010-11-29T09:56:09Z

Apple retail’s European expansion continues — now it intends opening a new store slap bang in the center of Amsterdam at the Leidseplein.

The store will be situated in the architecturally impressive building Apple Benelux already holds offices, a local report explains. The store opens on the ground floor in 2011.

Apple has apparently already begun recruiting staff for the store and is selecting builders.

At present the site is temporarily least to an art gallery and retail permission has already been granted by city authorities.

So: yet another reason to visit Amsterdam. The Apple Store. Opening in spring 2011.

Photo

2010-11-28T15:50:17Z

Officiële Apple Store Leidseplein Amsterdam?

2010-11-28T22:24:46Z

Er worden door Apple bijna wekelijks wel ergens op aarde officiële Apple Stores geopend, helaas worden wij Nederlanders nog steeds over het hoofd gezien en moeten we voor een bezoek aan een Apple Store uitwijken naar Duitland, Frankrijk en Engeland.

De laatste tijd zijn er echter geruchten dat Apple een Apple Store op de planning heeft staan voor Nederland. Als echte MacFreak kijken wij hier natuurlijk halsreikend naar uit. De eerste geruchten van een Apple Store in Amsterdam zijn alweer van een aantal maanden geleden. Het is daarom goed om te zien dat ook OMT, onze buren, er bovenop zitten om het laatste nieuws te brengen omtrent een 'echte' Apple Store in Nederland.

De begane grond van het Hirschgebouw aan het Leidseplein in Amsterdam zal hoogswaarschijnlijk de locatie worden waar Apple haar Nederlandse Apple Store gaat vestigen. Want medewerkers van de tijdelijke kunstgalerie die daar nu zit hebben aan aan OMT laten weten dat Apple inderdaad deze ruimte heeft gehuurd en dat er tevens al bouwplannen zouden zijn. 2011 gaat dus een mooi jaar worden voor MacFreaks!

Via: OMT